


it's not passin' fascination now

by gdgdbaby



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 19:44:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13060872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: There are plenty of unsavory characters in Tommy's line of work — two-bit con men only looking to make a quick buck, enforcers with zero finesse and even less understanding of human subconsciousness — but the forger that people in this business refer to as J-Lo is the only one he truly detests.





	it's not passin' fascination now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [formerlydf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/gifts).



> HI DF, happy hanukkah, here is some inception au for you. ♥
> 
> title from obsession by ok go. content warnings for mild violence inherent to the au.

There are plenty of unsavory characters in Tommy's line of work — two-bit con men only looking to make a quick buck, enforcers with zero finesse and even less understanding of human subconsciousness — but the forger that people in this business refer to as J-Lo is the only one he truly detests.

"I think it's possible you just hate her because she's so good," Jon says blithely in Paris, as if Tommy asked for his opinion mid-rant.

They've set up shop in a warehouse on the Riviera; an American diplomat has gone missing, and the State department thinks the Nigerian ambassador to France knows more than he's letting on. Tommy's wrapped up most of his recon, so he's watching Jon build the dream, slender panes of a stained-glass window rippling into existence. Jon's always been best at cathedrals.

Jon looks over his shoulder when he's finished with the window, eyebrows raised. "Am I wrong? It makes your job much harder when an outside consultant has already messed with someone's head." He starts laughing when Tommy scowls.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh huh," Jon says. He rubs his chin, spinning in a slow circle, and the pews turn a deep mahogany color. "And your bitterness has nothing to do with the fact that a security implant of hers eviscerated you the last time we were in China?"

"No," Tommy says, but it sounds unconvincing even to him.

Two months ago, he'd woken up an hour too early on the train to Shanghai next to their mark, a high-ranking steel executive. There was a sharp, phantom pain in his gut, radiating outward just above his hip, right where a sweet-faced, dark-haired woman's sword had sliced clean through him two levels deep. He and Jon and Ben managed to complete the job through alternative means, but for days after, Tommy found himself checking his father's old watch restlessly to make sure that the hands were still, that he was in the real world. It wasn't the first time he'd died in a dream, not even the twentieth time, and yet something about the oddness of it had lingered.

But — that isn't the point. Tommy pushes his jaw out and watches Jon whittle the arched ceiling down. "J-Lo is just a stupid alias," he says mulishly. "And we can't even be sure the implant wasn't some random projection in Dr. Jiang's head."

"Right," Jon says, laughter still threaded through his voice. "He just happened to have a projection with J-Lo tattooed on her neck floating around his head."

"Shut up, Favs," Tommy grumbles. "It's a dumb nickname, and forgery is a superfluous skill set that has no place in serious mindheists. We'd be better off carrying literal cardboard cutouts into our dreams."

 

 

"We're bringing a forger in for this one," Axe says at their next briefing a week later, because Tommy's life is a joke.

"Is that really necessary?" Tommy asks. He tries to stamp the feeling back into his toes. They're at a safe house on Long Island in mid-December, and Axe doesn't believe in central heating, or something. "Can't one of us just do — whatever it is? Play dress-up?" Jon smothers a laugh in his hand.

Axe sends him a stern look, and Tommy shuts his mouth. "He's been a government subcontractor for three months, passed all the background checks, and he's got an option to stay on longer term, so this is his trial run. Don't scare him away; we're just here to vet him. Be nice, Tommy."

"I'm always nice," Tommy mumbles, and Jon has to cough into his palm again.

"We could stand to branch out a little," Axe says, with an air of finality. "Forging is as much of an art as architecture is."

 _My mission success rate is 96% without it_ , Tommy wants to say, but that would be childish and unprofessional, so he just sinks into the couch and sighs. He can blame the moodiness on residual jet lag from Europe.

Across the room, sitting primly in a squashy armchair, Alyssa rolls her eyes. She's point woman this time, calling the shots. Tommy's mostly here for extraction purposes, which isn't his favorite, but — a job is a job, and sometimes you have to be a utility player. At least he can trust that Alyssa knows what she's doing. "So when do we get to meet this guy?" she asks, checking the time on her phone, which is when the door to the safe house swings wide open.

The person who strolls in is stocky and short, just a bit taller than Alyssa at her full height. That's Tommy's first impression. His hood is up over his head, but Tommy catches a hint of curly hair, the flash of a grin, and then every other person in the room has a gun drawn on him.

"Hi," the guy says, blinking owlishly behind his glasses, his hands tucked inside his pockets. "I'm Lovett. Uh, sorry it took me a while to find the place?"

 

 

Jonathan Ira Lovett is, according to the ill-formatted resume Axe forwards them after everyone has put their weapons away:

  * the best forger this side of the Atlantic Ocean (and the other side, too, if we're being honest here)
  * a master lockpicker
  * private security expert
  * sometime dabbler in Somnacin-related synthesis
  * not bad at stand-up comedy in a pinch, actually
  * like Gandalf, never late, nor early, but arrives precisely when he means to



Tommy looks up from his phone boggling. Axe shrugs. "He came highly recommended by the Secretary of State," he explains, as if that's good enough for him, and starts hooking up the PASIV.

Tommy feels a little steadier in the dream, which isn't anything new. It's one of Jon's stock blueprints, a speakeasy in Dupont Circle that they used to frequent a lot back in the day, when they were still special operatives in training. In Jon's defaults, everyone always ends up dressed like they're about to go clubbing or they're attending a black-tie cocktail party. Alyssa looks down at her sequined evening gown and sighs.

Lovett, though, is still bundled up in the winter gear he walked in wearing, standing in the middle of the room, shoulders slouched, peering curiously at his surroundings. He looks out of place, but not uncomfortable. It makes Tommy deeply suspicious. He brings a hand up to fiddle with one of his cufflinks, and then focuses on the steady tick of his watch.

Axe raises an eyebrow, just one, which means he's noticed the clothing. "Alright," he says, leaning back against the bar and waving a hand at Lovett. "Let's see what you can do."

Lovett exhales. Tommy blinks, and Lovett's gone, replaced by a mirror image of — Axe, dressed not in a suit but a pink, frilly tutu. Jon lets out a surprised honk of laughter, Alyssa snorts, and Axe shakes his head. Tommy tries not to grit his teeth too visibly. It's supposed to be an audition, not a joke.

"Generally there's a little more hair on my legs, but interesting choice," Axe says, calm.

"I just made an educated guess," Lovett says, and it's so fucking weird hearing the wrong voice coming out of Axe's mouth. A glass of whiskey materializes in Tommy's hand. He takes a long sip and sets it on the counter.

Lovett picks Jon next, eyebrows imploring — doppelganger Jon's neck is a little too long, which Tommy extracts some petty pleasure from — and then swaps to Alyssa. Tommy's so focused on the physical changes that it takes another minute for him to notice that the reality of the dream has also shifted, their surroundings no longer dim and intimate. They're in a wide ballroom now, soft piano music playing in the background, and Lovett's replicated the dress Alyssa's wearing down to the fish-scale sequins.

He steps up and extends a hand to Tommy, who blinks again, uncomprehending. "Dance with me?" Lovett says, and his voice has changed this time, too, matching Alyssa's high lilt.

Tommy tosses Alyssa — the real Alyssa, who looks begrudgingly impressed — a desperate look. She just shrugs at him. _Be nice_ , Tommy hears in his head, Axe's voice reverberating through his skull. He gingerly takes Lovett's hand.

"You're very tense," Lovett says conversationally, as they wheel away in a quick foxtrot. Tommy tries to force himself to relax; he's fairly certain the effort only makes him tenser. The worst part of this kind of discomfort is not that it exists, but that it's so hard to put a finger on why he feels the way he does. He just needs to keep reminding himself: _you aren't in Shanghai anymore. No one's going to slice you apart with a katana. It was all in your head._

"I'm not used to — shapeshifters," Tommy mutters, which is true enough, and they swing back toward the group, stepping in time with the music. Lovett's hand is warm in his, and he's pressed close enough that Tommy can smell a faint waft of floral perfume. It's not quite Alyssa's scent, but almost. "What's the point of this exercise, anyway?"

"Anybody can draw a still picture," Lovett says, like it's obvious. "A cardboard cutout." Tommy winces; Lovett either doesn't notice, or pretends he doesn't. Tommy feels the cue and dips Lovett automatically, one hand sliding around his back, and Lovett's — Alyssa's — hair ripples out naturally, swings exactly like it should on the way back up. There's a level of mastery and control here that even Tommy can't deny. "It's much harder to keep up a charade in motion."

The music ends, and they come to a stop in front of the others. Jon's clapping, because of course he is. "I didn't know you could dance like that, Tom," he says, grinning, as Lovett turns back into himself, puffy coat rematerializing around him.

Alyssa leans forward, arms crossed. "This is all well and good, but everyone you've forged so far has been standing right here." Her eyes narrow. "What can you recreate from memory?"

Lovett looks up thoughtfully and turns into President Obama in his tan suit. "Let's be clear," Lovett intones, in a perfect dupe of Obama's voice. There's a delicate rumble in the dreamscape, the chandeliers in the ballroom swinging. Jon's projections are probably about to find them.

"Hm," Axe says, both eyebrows raised now. "It's good work."

"Anyone more nondescript?" Alyssa asks drily.

President Obama morphs into a chubby little boy with dark eyes and curly hair, an older lady with long red tresses piled atop her head, and then a slim woman of Asian descent. She's dressed in a kimono this time rather than business casual, but Tommy would recognize the sword in her hands and the tattoo on her neck anywhere.

"What the _fuck_ ," Tommy says, heart slamming into his throat, and jolts awake in the safe house.

 

 

There's a question and answer portion of the interview after the practical, but Tommy can tell by the way Axe tosses Lovett a bunch of softballs that he's already made up his mind. Which is fine — Tommy isn't the boss around here. He's not the one who makes hiring decisions.

Tommy doesn't yell _you cut me in half_ out loud, because that would be uncouth. He manages to remain tight-lipped until Axe leaves them to the prep work. "I'll see you back in Virginia," he tells them at the door, and then he's gone. At least Tommy can go turn the thermostat up, now.

Alyssa's already knee-deep in case files for the job, tapping away at her computer. Tommy stays seated for a moment, fingers rubbing against his hip, and then follows Jon's voice into the kitchen.

"I can't believe you're J-Lo," Jon's saying, the traitor. He emerges from the fridge to hand Lovett a beer and tosses one to Tommy as well, eyes twinkling. "I love your work."

Lovett looks between them, appraising. "I think I'm missing the joke," he says archly.

"We were in Shanghai a couple months ago," Jon says, as if none of what went on is classified information.

"Let's just say I recognized your security implant," Tommy cuts in before Jon can say anything more, and Lovett starts smiling. Tommy shakes his head. "That katana is sharp."

"If you got far enough into the dream to reach her, you must be pretty skilled," Lovett returns, managing to sound complimentary and condescending at the same time. Tommy bristles. Jon's eyes are still twinkling.

"Good thing we're on the same side, then," Tommy manages.

"For now," Lovett says, and raises his hands when the muscles around Tommy's mouth go tight. "Just kidding! I'm kidding."

The thing is: dreamshare as an industry is still relatively nascent, barely a preteen. Like the Internet, aspects of it can be used for good or for ill, and there are huge swaths of gray in between. Lovett's questionable resume reveals a lot about his personality but very little about his past, which isn't strange, exactly; plenty of people who work in diplomatic espionage have backgrounds that are a little more colorful. That's always been true. Not everyone gets recruited straight out of college. Folks with misspent youths tend to understand where and how people keep secrets better. It's just — Tommy's going to be sharing dreams with Lovett. They're going to be walking through each other's heads day in and day out, at least for the duration of this job, and Tommy just always hates not _knowing_.

Later, when they've split off into different areas of the house for the night, Jon finds him brushing his teeth in the bathroom. "So," he says, leaning against the door frame. "Lovett's interesting."

Tommy makes a noncommittal noise and spits into the sink.

"I'm just saying," Jon continues, the corner of his mouth rising into a smirk. "Short brunettes are a particular weakness of yours."

Jon knows him too well. Usually, that doesn't make Tommy want to strangle him, but usually Jon's more easy going than insufferable. "Don't want to hear it, Favs," he mutters, and sends him a rude gesture when Jon starts laughing at him.

 

 

Tommy hasn't been able to sleep without chemical aid for as long as he can remember. The one thing that's changed through the years since the Agency snapped him up is that he's swapped Ambien out for Somnacin and a PASIV, which just means his dreams are always controlled and always the same. His body needs the rest, because science hasn't figured that part out yet, but it feels like his mind never sleeps. Most of the time, all he does is run for eight hours out on the open road, feet pounding against the pavement so long that he swears he can still feel it when he wakes up.

Other times, though, he goes home. In this job, you have to hold onto the little comforts when you can. This is the first time in months that he's been within a four hour radius of Boston. Whenever he's feeling particularly nostalgic, he takes the opportunity to reminisce a little. Fill his head with thoughts of family. Often, a projection of his sister makes an appearance in these dreams; sometimes his dad. Once, he and Jon spent the evening at Fenway, throwing peanuts at each other and double-fisting hot dogs and beer. In his dreams, at least, the Red Sox always win.

Tonight, there's a cold front moving in, and Tommy stamps his way through the snow on Comm Ave and ducks into the first bar he sees. It seems his subconscious has decided to fill the place with all the folks he's ever worked with. Ronnie and Cody are shooting darts in the back with Shomik and Ben. Jen and Dan have their heads bent together over some Escher model. Jon's sitting with Alyssa, and they wave Tommy over after the bartender finishes mixing his gin and tonic. _No rest for the wicked_ , he thinks, and joins their table.

They're three drinks in when Tommy looks out into the crowd and sees the girl in the kimono. He feels his heartbeat stall in his chest, knuckles white as he clenches his hand around his glass. When Lovett slides in the booth next to him, though, he's himself, warm and solid. "Fashionably late as always," Jon says, affable, and something about them laughing together seems — right, despite everything.

It's not the first time an unexpected projection's intruded on his dreams, not by far, but it's the first time Tommy's stayed in it for this long, after.

He wakes up hanging halfway off the couch in the living room, a line of drool trailing out of his mouth, feeling kind of unsettled. The rest of the house is quiet, and it's still dark outside. He just lies there for a while, thinking about nothing at all, before pushing up and shuffling into the kitchen to put a pot of coffee on.

Alyssa's left a stack of documents out on the end table next to the couch for them to look over. Once Tommy feels a little more alive, he flips through the first packet. It's just a simple fact-finding mission, but the job is a little more complex than usual — hence the need for a believable distraction in the form of a forger. Russia's permanent representative to the UN will be flying from LaGuardia to DC in three days' time; the mark is not Vitaly Churkin himself, whose subconscious is undoubtedly militarized, but his new personal assistant, Ms. Veronika Petrov. The target is any pertinent knowledge she might have related to her employer's meetings about several ongoing resolutions that are of special interest to the United States. The tricky part is that it's entirely possible she has no idea what she knows is pertinent. However long Lovett can pretend to be Churkin while Tommy and Jon take a stroll through her head is key.

He's looking at the blueprints Jon will be studying to construct Churkin's office at UN headquarters and the surrounding complex when Lovett slides out from one of the bedrooms, hair pressed flat on one side of his head. His sleep clothes have little robots on them; he looks patently ridiculous. Tommy can't tear his eyes away. He tells himself it's because he's just being vigilant.

"Hey," Lovett croaks, and Tommy nods at him, jerky. "You're up early."

He doesn't think saying _I dreamed about you last night_ would go over so well, so he just grimaces. "I'm always up early," he says, brandishing one of the blueprints. "There's too much work to do."

"Mm." Lovett stretches. Tommy's throat goes dry when the hem of Lovett's shirt pulls up to reveal a sliver of his stomach. Then he mumbles, "I need to take a piss before I go back to sleep," and the moment's over.

 

 

They spend most of the next few days in Jon's head, building the dream, Lovett getting comfortable in his new skin, all four of them running through an itinerary of typical working hours at the UN. Tommy will be pretending to be one of the unobtrusive interoffice clerks to allow for maximum access. He walks through the building as many times as he can, memorizes all the little nooks and crannies of the replica DC-1 that Jon's constructed, any place Veronika might feel like hiding what she knows.

Alyssa's managed to get her hands on specs for the custom safe behind one of the paintings in Churkin's office. "You'll probably have to break into it, if it comes to that," she comments, eyeing the reinforced steel.

"I can help," Lovett says, which is how they end up practicing together, Tommy's face inches away from his, listening for the telltale clicks as Lovett's fingers turn the dial. Lovett's eyes are a lighter brown up close, and that doesn't make Tommy feel any less unsettled, but the quality of the emotion is different. He needs to stop thinking about it and just focus. "The key to this kind of combination lock," Lovett says, "is ignoring all the extraneous cues. If you wade through the rest of the noise, you'll be able to figure out which clicks to ignore and which ones you should be listening for."

"Okay," Tommy says, and reaches up to give it a go. It takes a while, and total concentration still eludes him, but he manages to crack the safe on his third try.

"Impressive, Tommy," Lovett says, when the door swings open to reveal a fully redacted CIA memo, and the way his voice curls around the words makes Tommy's face feel too hot.

Tommy ducks his head and shrugs. "Not as fast as you, though." Lovett's grinning when he looks up again. "Do I even wanna know where you learned how to do this?"

Lovett's smile turns sharp. "All you have to do is ask," he says.

Tommy squints at him. "Would you tell me the truth?"

"What do you think?" Lovett asks, which isn't an answer at all, and then Jon blows a hole clean through the side of the building because he's thinking too hard, and they have to start all over again.

 

 

The night before the job, Tommy emerges from a lukewarm shower to find Lovett in the living room armchair, already hooked up to the PASIV, chest rising and falling in gentle repose. Tommy spends a couple of minutes debating the merits of joining him, manners warring with curiosity, and then thinks, _Fuck it_ , and unreels a new line. Lovett wouldn't be doing this out here if he didn't want the company, right?

In the dream, they're at what appears to be a comedy club; someone on stage is telling lackluster jokes to a couple of tables at the front. Tommy finds Lovett off to the side, next to the bar, nursing a Diet Coke as he watches. Lovett's eyebrows rise when Tommy slides in next to him and orders a Sam Adams.

"Coming into other people's dreams without asking is kind of rude," he says, but he doesn't seem too bothered.

Tommy leans against the counter. "How can you tell I'm not just a projection?"

"Making people seem real is my raison d'etre," Lovett says, which — yeah, alright. That makes sense. "I'd know if you were fake." A moment later, Jon walks in through the front doors, and Lovett sighs. "Yes, let's just all join the party in Lovett's head."

"You've been in mine for the past two days," Jon points out, and Lovett's mouth twists into a half-smile, conceding the point. "Where is this?"

"Somewhere in Manhattan," Lovett says, taking another sip of his soda. "Oh, hey, it's my turn."

He leaves his drink with Tommy and Jon, makes his way on stage. Maybe part of it is that they're in Lovett's head, and the audience is clearly rooting for him, but he starts cracking wise about don't ask don't tell, and Tommy finds himself actually laughing. Lovett's bright-eyed and engaging, possesses the type of singular charm that draws people in, makes them pay attention. His delivery is crisp, and the moments he breaks before he gets the full joke out are endearing rather than annoying. It doesn't help that Jon keeps guffawing next to Tommy like he's recording the laugh track for an episode of Friends.

"Great set," Jon says, when Lovett returns to collect his Diet Coke. "Very topical."

Lovett glances at Tommy, expectant, and pouts when Tommy shakes his head, which he's definitely not going to think about too much. "It was good, Lovett," he says finally, and is surprised at how easily it comes out. Lovett smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and Tommy can't help smiling back.

Jon turns to signal the bartender for a drink of his own, and then looks at Lovett again. "Did you ever think you could do this for a living?"

Lovett's smile turns a little wistful. "I thought I could do a lot of things," he says, shrugging. "I was a math major at school, so maybe I should've ended up an architect like you."

Jon makes a thoughtful noise. "I thought I was going to be a speechwriter, and then I got recruited to build dreams instead, so. Funny how that works."

Lovett nods, drawing a circle around the rim of his can with the tip of his index finger. "I worked as a paralegal after graduating, which is how I got into dreamshare. I'm sure you can imagine the dirt-digging that goes on in big law. Then I went into private security, which paid well but got boring pretty quickly." 

Jon's mouth quirks. "So the opposite of stand-up."

The outline of Lovett's body flickers as he shrugs. "I mean, I guess forgery is a bit like performing. The audience is just very specific."

They both look at Tommy, who clamps his lips together for a moment, his first impulse to hide away. "He's not usually this uptight, honestly," Jon says, sotto voce, and Tommy kicks him.

"No, it's okay," Lovett says, sounding amused. His voice goes softer. "Look. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I'm sorry a version of me cut you in half in someone else's dream. That sucks."

Something in Tommy's chest loosens. He shakes his head. "You were just doing your job," he says.

Lovett's mouth lifts. "Thank you," he replies, "and now that we've gotten that over with, hopefully you can finally remove the stick from your ass." Jon tosses his head back and laughs, because he's a dick.

Tommy takes another swallow of his beer and says, blandly, "Okay. If we're being truthful here, then I have to tell you that J-Lo is one of the dumbest aliases I've ever come across."

Lovett starts laughing too. "He's been sitting on that one for a while," Jon puts in.

"I'll take the constructive criticism," Lovett says, "but I think it's a little too late to change."

"You win some, you lose some," Tommy says. He plays with the sticker on his beer bottle, and when he looks up again, Lovett's leaning back against the bar, staring at him through narrowed eyes, like he's trying to figure Tommy out. It's not bad scrutiny. "My story is pretty boring. Jon and I were part of the same recruit class." The corner of his mouth twitches. "He was my least favorite architect to work with."

"A total lie," Jon protests, and Lovett huffs, appreciative.

"I was a philosophy major," Tommy continues, dry, "so my choices were either spending the rest of my twenties getting high while pursuing a PhD in research or doing something practical with it. My dad served, and I always wanted to follow in his footsteps and do something for the country, so it was kind of a no-brainer when the CIA came calling."

Jon's grinning when he finishes. "Tommy wants to save the world," he says, and Tommy hides his smile in his beer.

Some days, he wonders if the long hours and the constant travel are worth it. Missing every holiday because he's overseas, or working, or both. For now, he thinks: it is. And eventually, when it feels like the answer to that question has changed, well. He'll know it's time to leave.

"Oh," Lovett says, "an idealist," and lifts his Diet Coke in a toast. "I'll drink to that." He doesn't sound dismissive, really — just surprised. There's something gratifying about that. Tommy raises his beer, clinks it with Jon's glass, Lovett's soda, and drains the rest of it.

 

 

In the morning, they head to LaGuardia, pass through security without incident (without _much_ incident: there is the minor freakout when Lovett thinks he accidentally left his passport back at the safe house, but he finds it in his carry-on eventually, so all's well).

Ten minutes after they take off, once everyone else in the business cabin is knocked out, Alyssa pulls the PASIV's briefcase out from underneath the seat in front of her.

Every day that Vitaly Churkin works out of the UN complex in New York City, he stops by the bathroom on the twentieth floor just outside of his office to freshen up, check that his tie is immaculate, adjust the cuffs of his dress shirt. Politicians and diplomats, Tommy's found, are just like regular humans, predictable creatures of habit, and their personal assistants know their schedules down to the minute. The projection of Churkin that lives in Veronika's head steps into the bathroom at half past seven, like clockwork, and the three of them are there to meet him. Tommy's got the chloroformed rag pressed over Churkin's mouth and nose before his eyes can even go wide with shock. They make sure he's trussed up and snoozing on the toilet seat in the handicapped stall, stick an _OUT OF ORDER_ sign on the locked door, and agree to meet back up on the hour, every hour, for status updates.

"Good luck, gentlemen," Lovett says, grinning, his voice carrying the perfect pitch of a Russian accent, and marches out the door.

The answer to their question of how much Veronika knows turns out to be "not much, really." Even in sleep, Veronika's mind seems mostly preoccupied with making sure the office runs in an orderly fashion, an impulse that Tommy can relate to. Jon's brief turn as the IT guy stopping by to fix Veronika's desktop computer doesn't reveal anything but a penchant for playing Windows solitaire, and Lovett's conversations with her only serve to provide plot points from the latest telenovela she's watching and the items on Churkin's holiday shopping list she has yet to purchase on his behalf.

The rest of the building is filled with run-of-the-mill ambassadors and assistants going about their day-to-day work. All the file cabinets Tommy manages to rifle through are filled with blank sheets of A4-sized paper. At lunch, he floats around the main cafeteria in the Secretariat building with an overpriced deli sandwich. He does happen to pick up some interesting gossip about a couple of staffers that work for the office of the Serbian ambassador, but otherwise, everything seems scrubbed clean.

"We should probably still break into the safe," Jon says in the afternoon, during another bathroom rendezvous, with about twenty minutes left of the flight up in real time. "Just so we can be sure that we've covered all our bases."

"You did practice it," Lovett says. He still looks like Churkin when Tommy looks at him dead-on, but when he glances into the mirror, Lovett's face smirks back at him. "I have faith in you."

"Right," Tommy says, fingers worrying at the knot of his tie. "And how do you propose I walk into your office without a proper disguise?"

Jon frowns, taps his chin. "You could pretend to have an appointment with Churkin."

Lovett shakes his head. "If I have to go back with him, that would take me out of commission as the person who's supposed to keep Ms. Petrov preoccupied while you two snoop around."

"Plus, grifting is not my forte," Tommy says. "It's been hard enough walking around like I'm supposed to be here."

"You do blush very easily," Lovett comments, and Tommy feels himself turning red, as if on cue. Lovett grins. "See?"

Tommy tries to will the heat out of his face. "If I had a package to drop off, she'd just take it for him at her desk instead of letting me back into his office. What about a fire drill?"

"That's almost too disruptive," Jon sighs. "I still have to hold the dream together. If the sprinklers go off and the kick is too hard we'll just wake up and have to start all over again, and we don't have the time for that."

A little divot appears in Lovett's brow as he mulls it over. "How about this?" he says slowly. "I can mask you as you're walking through the room, if I focus enough, but only for a few seconds. You won't be invisible, but eyes will slide right off you." They both stare at him for a moment, and Lovett shrugs. "It's like forging, except I'm projecting something different onto the surroundings, onto you. Letting people see what they want to see."

Tommy blinks. "I didn't know that was possible."

"There are a lot of things you don't know, Vietor," Lovett returns, and Jon laughs when Tommy's expression turns dark. "Look, it's the only chance we have."

"Are you sure you'll be able to maintain your disguise while also masking me?" Lovett pauses for a second too long, and Tommy's stomach sinks. "How many times have you tried this?"

Lovett leans back against the bathroom counter and folds his arms. "Do you trust me?"

"Not at all," Tommy replies, without hesitation.

"Good," Lovett says, and, inexplicably, smiles. "That means you'll be paying very close attention."

Jon breaks off from them as they walk back to the office. Tommy feels nervousness building in his gut every step they take. He's kind of vibrating by the time they get to the door.

"Hey," Lovett says, and for a moment, he flickers back into an image of himself, small hand wrapping around Tommy's wrist, squeezing once before letting go. "Relax, Tommy." He smiles, and then Vitaly Churkin's standing in front of him again, glasses sliding down his nose, white hair receding. "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's distractions."

Lovett pushes into the suite and proceeds to throw a proper tantrum in irate Russian when one of Veronika's projections spills a cup of hot coffee on Churkin's nice suit. With everyone suitably preoccupied, Tommy slips in behind him. The waiting room is only filled with a couple of people, and their eyes gloss right over him. Incredible. A zing of adrenaline shoots up Tommy's spine.

Churkin's office is down at the end of the hall, and the door is already slightly ajar. He looks back once, briefly, when he gets there. Lovett's still yelling. Veronika's trying to mop the coffee off his lapels. Lovett meets Tommy's eyes over her shoulder, nods slightly. Tommy closes the door and locks it quietly behind him, heart pounding in his throat.

He allows himself one moment to breathe, and then gets to work.

This part always makes the hair on the back of Tommy's neck stand on end. It's why he doesn't volunteer to be extractor often; he's much better at gathering information, sifting through documents and dossiers, disseminating it as required. Even after all these years, the act of breaking into someone's mind still makes something inside him revert to his seven-year-old self, trying to lie about stealing cookies out of the jar in the pantry.

 _Get it together, Vietor_ , Tommy thinks, and moves the painting hanging behind Churkin's desk to the floor. He exhales slowly, presses his ear to the cool steel of the safe. He steadies his shaking fingers against the dial before starting to turn it, which is when all the alarms in the building go off.

 

 

They don't make it much further into the dream, but Tommy does get into the safe, somehow, before the whole thing collapses. Alyssa's already putting the PASIV away by the time Tommy comes to, back in the real world, hand rubbing at the patch of skin where the IV had been attached to his wrist. "Alyssa," he says, swallowing drily.

She gazes back at him, calm. "What did you find?"

It happens, sometimes. You come away from a job not with what you were looking for, but something else entirely, unexpected intelligence. Tommy couldn't finish reading everything in the file he found behind Churkin's painting, didn't have enough time with security angrily pounding on the door, but the pages he did manage to flip through included very detailed plans about a plot to overthrow the Ukrainian government. Russian reannexation. It remains to be seen why Veronika Petrov had that kind of knowledge — for all they know, it could just be planted misinformation — but that's a problem for a different team.

"Forensics will go over the memory backup," Alyssa says, patting the briefcase in her lap, and carefully smooths a hand over Tommy's shoulder. "You did good."

Jon's just waking up across the aisle, the grogginess wearing off slower for him, and Lovett's still out cold. So are Veronika and Churkin, which makes sense — Tommy had watched Alyssa hit them with the double dose of tranquilizer before he fell asleep. "Thanks," Tommy says, and then leans back against his seat, neck stiff. Glances down to check the watch on his other wrist: no ticking, the hands frozen at seven o'clock in perpetuity.

 

 

Tommy and Jon usually go out for drinks after jobs — celebratory, for missions that went well, and commiserative, on the rare occasions they went sideways — before they split off to new assignments. This time, though, when they've finished debriefing with Axe at headquarters, Lovett's the one who announces at large: "I could use a fucking drink. A real one."

Jon sends Tommy a meaningful look. Tommy sighs. He already knows what Jon's going to do, and once Jon's made up his mind about something, there's no stopping him. Tommy might as well let it happen; it's the path of least resistance. "We know just the place," Jon says, hooking an arm through Lovett's and Alyssa's, and pulls them all out of the building.

It's Friday night, the end of a long news cycle, which means the speakeasy is packed with suits. "This is where you took me in the first dream," Lovett says, looking around.

"Welcome to the club," Jon says, grinning, and orders them a round of vodka shots.

The nice thing about doing most of his drinking in dreams is that it means Tommy usually doesn't have to deal with the hangover the next day. It also means that he's forgotten what four shots in quick succession and mixing alcohols will do to his ability to think straight. He's pretty buzzed by the time Jon breaks away from their table to go chat up a cute blonde at the bar. Lovett and Alyssa get up to dance, and Tommy watches them for a while, nodding along to the bass thumping through the subwoofers.

Tommy sees people he recognizes at some of the other tables, leaning against the walls, and he could go talk to them if he really wanted to, shoot the shit with Ronnie about the latest Somnacin compounds he's cooking up in the chem lab, ask Gibbs what jobs are on the horizon in the coming year. He keeps staring out at the dance floor, though, sees Alyssa get on her toes to say something in Lovett's ear and watches Lovett laugh, mouth stretched wide, curls bouncing.

In Tommy's mind's eye, the girl with the sword and Vitaly Churkin and Lovett blur together for a moment. He blinks the afterimages away, shakes them out of his head, and all he's left with is Lovett with his arms raised in the middle of the room, brimming over with life. Lovett's disorganized and loud and his dress shirt doesn't fit right and he doesn't know what to do with his hair, and one of his security implants once cut Tommy in half inside the dream of a Chinese steel mogul, but all that means is Lovett's very, very good at his job. Improbably good.

He's also smiling at Tommy over Alyssa's shoulder, toothy and real. Tommy has to look away, stare down at the wooden panels beneath his feet. If he's being honest with himself, there's only really one thing he wants to do right now, and it involves him, Lovett, and one of the hotel rooms in the block that the Agency has reserved for them at the W.

The music changes to something less heavy, and Tommy blinks when the tips of two beat-up sneakers swim into view. Lovett's circled back to their table, one hand cocked on his hip. "Alyssa went to get another drink," he says, and holds his other hand out like he did on the first day, in the ballroom in Jon's head. "Come dance with me."

Tommy shakes his head, smiles when Lovett makes a face at him. "I'm good, thanks."

"Come on," Lovett wheedles. "We've danced before."

"Not to this kind of music."

"You're just afraid that I'll be better than you," Lovett complains.

"Oh, I already know you're better than I am," Tommy says. "No contest."

Lovett wrinkles his nose, nonplussed. "You're being nice to me. Why are you being nice?"

"I'm always nice," Tommy says, the corner of his mouth lifting. "I'm just telling the truth. All hail Lovett, king of the dance floor." He has the unique pleasure of seeing the exact moment Lovett gets it, the way his lips part and his face goes slack.

"You're flirting with me." Lovett rocks back on the heels of his feet, sucking at his teeth, before rocking forward again, eyes sharp with curiosity. "Tommy? Tell me if I've gotten it wrong."

"I'm flirting with you," Tommy agrees, the alcohol making it easier to admit. "Is it working?"

"I thought you hated me," Lovett says, marveling, almost to himself.

Tommy stands. He likes that Lovett has to look up at him. "You know what they say about thin lines," he says, and leans down to kiss Lovett. For a moment, Lovett's stunned, frozen in place, and then he surges up to return the kiss, the press of his mouth hot and hard and perfect, and Tommy thinks, _yes, this is what I want_ , so clear in his head that it's a wonder he doesn't say it out loud.

 

 

Making it to the hotel is a blur, and Tommy doesn't experience the rest of the evening in one continuous take so much as he remembers the impressions of things: the frantic way they undress each other, the pale glow of Lovett's skin in the dim light of the room, the sting of Lovett's teeth when they sink into the tendon of Tommy's neck and the sweet sound that falls out of Lovett's mouth when he comes. "I'm not dreaming, am I?" Lovett asks breathlessly at one point. He's balanced in Tommy's lap, hand slick with spit and his own jizz, fingers curling around the shaft of Tommy's dick just hard enough to make him gasp.

Tommy slides a hand up to tangle in Lovett's hair and says, "Jerk me off a lot in your dreams?"

Lovett doesn't reply, but the dancing in his eyes says, _maybe_ and _wouldn't you like to know?_ Tommy would, but Lovett tightens his grip around him, and the follow-up question dies in Tommy's throat, replaced instead by a hungry, desperate noise that feels wrenched from his chest. His hips rise, heels digging into the mattress, every nerve in his body singing. Lovett's laughing when Tommy pulls him down to kiss again.

 

 

He wakes up five hours later because his phone is ringing, and it takes a minute of flailing to unearth it from the pile of clothing they ditched on the floor the previous night. "Hey," he croaks into the receiver, and feels the lump of Lovett beneath the covers stir.

"You've got a flight out of Dulles to catch in three hours," comes Axe's voice over the line. "Istanbul."

Tommy closes his eyes, rubs the heel of one hand against his right eyelid hard enough to see stars. "Morning to you, too," he says.

Axe huffs. "Ticket's in your email, plus everything else you might need to know."

Tommy lets his arm flop back down when the line goes dead. It occurs to him, as he stares up at the ceiling, that he actually managed to sleep through the night.

Lovett rolls over in bed as Tommy finishes getting dressed, squints at him through gummy eyes. His hair is a mess; Tommy wants to run his hands through it over and over and over again.

"I wasn't sneaking out," Tommy says without preamble, before Lovett even has the opportunity to open his mouth. For emphasis, he knee-walks across the bed, bends down to press their lips together. Lovett turns it filthy almost immediately. They both taste shitty, like too-stale hotel air, but the kiss is still good. Electric. Tommy pulls back reluctantly when he runs out of breath. "Axe called. I have to be at the airport."

"Job?"

"Yeah. You'll probably be getting something similar soon." Tommy sits back on his haunches, tilts his head to the side, and smiles. "You're one of us, now."

"That sounds nice." A pause, and then, careful: "I hope you don't treat all new hires like this."

Tommy's blushing; he can feel the heat rise in his cheeks. "No."

Lovett bites his lip, looks up through his lashes. "Don't be a stranger next time," he says, and the way he enunciates the last two words makes Tommy's belly feel too warm.

He's totally fucked. He can't say he's really displeased with the situation he's found himself in, though. "I won't," Tommy says, and kisses him one more time before he goes.

 

 

His phone buzzes again on the cab ride to the international terminal at Dulles. The text is from an unknown number, but the contents of the message make it pretty clear who it is: it's a picture of one of Tommy's cufflinks. He hadn't even noticed it was missing in his haste. He can't be sure if he left it there by accident or if Lovett had taken it on purpose, but both scenarios seem equally likely.

 _i'll keep it safe for you, don't worry_ , comes the cheeky follow-up message, and Tommy hides his smile in his hand, even though there's no one else around to see it.

 _I should hope so_ , Tommy replies. After a moment's consideration, he saves the number in his contacts as J-Lo.

**Author's Note:**

> in the 50k version of this that i didn't have time to write, eventually, after the kids become too disillusioned and leave government for good, they start up their own mindheist security consulting firm together and are wildly successful!!! because art imitates life, or something. sorry i didn't manage to get there.


End file.
